New @platea Event

hopes/dreams/fears

Online Public Art Collective to Gather and Broadcast Communities' Hopes, Dreams and Fears Worldwide

"hopes/dreams/fears" is a global online public art project launched in New York City on June 6 during the Brooklyn Museum's 1stfan meetup and formally starting June 12 during the FIGMENT NYC arts festival on Governor's Island and running till the end of July. Members of online public art collective @Platea are gathering individuals' hopes, dreams and fears in the form of status update language (i.e., "Jessica hopes that she graduates with honors next year." "Fred fears he might lose his job due to the recession"). These will then be broadcast to a broader audience via a Facebook page, with the goal of uniting diverse groups via social media and offering a collective picture of communities' hopes, dreams and fears during this time of economic crisis and transition.

Worldwide, @Platea participants are receiving guidance on how to gather hopes, dreams and fears from their communities, either through a summer festival or through their circle of friends.  Ultimately, the collected updates broadcast over the Facebook page will paint a global collective consciousness in the during this time of economic crisis and transition.

In the open-source and open-information culture of Web 2.0, "hopes/dreams/fears" is a free-form public art project that anyone is welcome to join and participate in. @Platea members span the globe, from California to Switzerland to Tasmania, and "hopes/dreams/fears" gatherings will vary in size from the 10,000-person FIGMENT NYC in Governor's Island to small dinner parties and community events.

@Platea is a collective of individuals interested in the power of public art carried out in the digital megacity of social media. Their projects have attracted the attention of a number of art world blogs, including Bad at Sports, C-Monster, Hrag Vartanian, and New Curator, and they have been invited to present their work at the Brooklyn Museum on June 6.

@Platea was founded by artist An Xiao, a photographer and digital media artist exploring issues in contemporary social media. Her social media-based art projects have been featured with the Brooklyn  Museum, the Guardian UK, Yale University and ARTNews.  Its steering committee is comprised of artists and arts professionals in three countries and includes Courtney Bryan (Canyon, TX), Jonathan Gray (Carbondale, IL), Christi Nielsen (Los Angeles, CA), Jennifer Ng (Lugano, Switzerland), Ingrid Murnane (Portsmouth, UK) and Joanie San Chirico (Toms River, NJ).

For information on how to participate, @Platea can be found online at http://plateastweets.blogspot.com, http://twitter.com/platea/ 

You can also fill out the hopes/dreams/fears form here.